LEI-MAIL-FORMATS(5)        public-inbox user manual        LEI-MAIL-FORMATS(5)

NAME
       lei-mail-formats - description of mail formats supported by lei

DESCRIPTION
       lei-q(1) supports writing to several existing mail formats for
       interoperability with existing mail user agents (MUA); below is an
       overview of them to help users choose.

Maildir
       The default output format when given a filesystem path, it supports
       parallel read-write access.  Performance is acceptable for smaller
       directories, but degrades as mailboxes get larger.  Speed and
       scalability are limited by kernel and filesystem performance due to the
       use of small files and large number of syscalls.

       See also: <https://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html> and
       <https://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir>

Mbox family
       The mbox family consists of several incompatible formats.  Locking for
       parallel access is supported, but may not be compatible across tools.
       With compression (e.g. gzip(1)), they require the least amount of space
       while offering good read-only performance.

       Keyword updates ("Status:" and/or "X-Status:" headers) generally
       require rewriting the entire mbox.

       See also:
       <https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000383.shtml>,
       mbox(5)

   mboxo
       The traditional BSD format.  It quotes "From " to ">From ", but lines
       already beginning with ">From " do not get quoted, thus automatic
       reversibility is not guaranteed.  MUAs which favor "mboxcl" or
       "mboxcl2" may convert these automatically to their preferred format.

       Truncation is undetectable unless compressed with gzip or similar.

   mboxrd
       An evolution of "mboxo", but quotes "From " lines prefixed with any
       number of ">" characters and is thus fully reversible.

       This format is emitted by PublicInbox::WWW(3pm) with gzip.  Since git
       2.10, "git am --patch-format=mboxrd" reads this format.  "git log" and
       "git format-patch --stdout" can also generate this format with the
       "--pretty=mboxrd" switch.

       As with uncompressed "mboxo", uncompressed mboxrd are vulnerable to
       undetectable truncation.

       It gracefully degrades to being treated as "mboxo" by MUAs unaware of
       the format as excessive ">From " quoting is recognizable to humans.

   mboxcl
       "mboxo" with a "Content-Length:" header, "From " lines remain quoted to
       retain readability with "mboxo" and "mboxrd" MUAs.  However, it is easy
       to corrupt these files when using tools which are not aware of
       "Content-Length:" and write out updates as "mboxo".

       mutt(1) will convert "mboxo" and "mboxrd" to mboxcl upon opening.

       See also: <https://www.jwz.org/doc/content-length.html>

   mboxcl2
       Like "mboxcl", but without "From " any quoting.  It is wholly
       incompatible with MUAs which only handle "mboxo" and/or "mboxrd".  This
       is format is generated by mutt(1) when writing to a new mbox.

MH
       Not yet supported, locking semantics (or lack thereof) appear to make
       it unsuitable for parallel access.  It is widely-supported by a variety
       of MUAs and mailing list managers, however.

MMDF
       Not yet supported, and it's unclear if current usage/support makes it
       worth supporting.

IMAP
       Depending on the IMAP server software and configuration, IMAP servers
       may use any (or combination) of the aforementioned formats or a non-
       standard database backend.  Currently, lei uses Mail::IMAPClient which
       has acceptable performance over low-latency links.  Performance over
       high-latency links is currently poor.

eml
       A single raw message file.  "eml" is not an output format for lei, but
       accepted by as an "--input-format" ("-F") for read-only commands such
       as lei-tag(1) and lei-import(1).

       Since "eml" is the suffix for the "message/rfc822" MIME type (according
       to the "mime.types" file), lei will infer the type based on the ".eml"
       suffix if "--input-format" is unspecified

       ".patch"-suffixed files generated by git-format-patch(1) (without
       "--stdout") are "eml" files with the addition of an mbox "From "
       header.  lei(1) removes "From " lines to treat them as "eml" when
       reading these for compatibility with "git-am(1)" and similar tools.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 2021 all contributors <mailto:meta@public-inbox.org>

       License: AGPL-3.0+ <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>

SEE ALSO
       lei(1), lei-q(1), lei-convert(1), lei-overview(7)

public-inbox.git                  1993-10-02               LEI-MAIL-FORMATS(5)